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International Affairs from a Canadian PerspectiveMon, 09 Sep 2019 11:00:25 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1146327613Canada is no ‘rule-of-law’ country in Latin Americahttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/canada-is-no-rule-of-law-country-in-latin-america/
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 11:00:25 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=6048Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland likes to say that Canada is a rule-of-law country. We Canadians like to think of ourselves as exemplary on the world stage. But, in Latin America, Canada is not seen as a “rule-of-law country.” It is known as a country that organized and cavorts with the Lima Group—an intergovernmental organization formed to address the crisis in Venezuela—at Donald Trump’s bequest.

Interestingly there was no mention of the Lima Group in Mr. Trudeau’s recent foreign policy speech, though he decried populism and praised efforts on the environment and Indigenous rights. Here is a brief introduction to “Canada’s Friends in Latin Ameria.”

Guatemala—Jimmy Morales. This former comedian was elected in a wave of anti-corruption protests. Since then he has disbanded the most important UN backed anti-corruption investigative team in Latin America (CICIG); attempted to amnesty the military officers who have been convicted of crimes against humanity in Guatemala’s civil war of the 1980s; consorted with narco-traffickers; and ignored a ruling by the Constitutional Court that it was illegal to sign an agreement with Donald Trump making Guatemala a “Safe Third Country for Refugees.” In an Aug. 22 op-ed in the New York Times, scholar Anita Isaacs wrote that Guatemala is at risk of becoming a failed state.

Honduras—Juan Orlando Hernández. A document just filed in New York’s Southern District refers to him as a co-conspirator who worked with his brother and former president Porfirio Lobo “to use drug trafficking to help assert power and control in Honduras” and to buy his election in 2013. A number of Indigenous leaders and protesters have been killed by members of the security forces.

Colombia—Iván Duque. The Peace Accord signed between the previous government and the FARC was attacked by Duque in his re-election bid. He has since complied with only a quarter of the terms of the accord. Hundreds of local civic leaders have been murdered by paramilitary forces with impunity.

Peru—Martín Vizcarra. He plans to build an airport near Machu Pichu. Opposed by UNESCO, archeologists, environmentalists and academics from around the world, as well as Indigenous local citizens, such an airport will affect the environment of the sacred valley surrounding Machu Pichu.

Brazil—Jairo Bolsonaro. The Amazon is burning at a record rate. Data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) shows that deforestation in June was 88 per cent higher than last year. Indigenous communities are facing threats as protection for their tribal lands have been cut. And Bolsonaro has a long record of racist remarks about Indigenous people. One example: “The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture. They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13 per cent of the national territory?” Bolsonaro also advocates shooting criminals in the street by police or private citizens.

The target of the Lima Group is Venezuela—Nicolas Maduro. The situation there is undeniably disastrous, but the Lima Group is in no institutional or moral position to determine Venezuela’s future, and has substantially worsened the plight of Venezuelans while undermining opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s legitimacy.

What do these “Friends of Canada” have in common? There are substantial Canadian mining interests in these countries. In Latin America, Canada is not known as a “rule-of-law country” but as the home of aggressive mining companies that are environmentally destructive and often in violent conflict with Indigenous communities—see current court cases against Hudbay Minerals, Tahoe Resources, Nevsun Resources, and Blackfire Exploration in Chiapas.

In 2017 the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School linked 28 Canadian mining companies to 44 deaths, 403 injuries and 709 arrests, detentions and legal complaints in Latin America from 2000 through 2015. The targets were often anti-mining demonstrators.

Canada—anti-populist, environmentalist and supporter of Indigenous people? A “rule of law country?” Not in Latin America.

Patricia Aldana is a Guatemalan Canadian who is a book publisher specializing in bringing books from around the world to North America. She has worked as a volunteer with Central American refugee children in Central America and at the U.S. border. She was named to the Order of Canada in 2010.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect iAffairs’ editorial stance.

]]>6048I quit Twitter two years ago and never looked backhttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/i-quit-twitter-two-years-ago-and-never-looked-back/
Wed, 04 Sep 2019 11:00:29 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=6046In his memoirs, Gore Vidal tells of the time when Graham Greene, in a conversation about discretion and privacy, accused him of a disgraceful gaucherie—that the intellectual novelist seemed to actually enjoy appearing on television. “I said I liked to talk publicly about politics,” Vidal writes. “And street corners were no longer desirable venues.”

These days, of course, writers don’t have to appear on television to satisfy their desire for street-corner sermonizing: they can talk about politics, or anything else they like, on Twitter. Though lately this too has seemed a sort of faux pas among serious people.

Over the past few weeks, debate about the value of the micro-blogging platform arose across the internet, as various reporters and critics, as well as pundits and politicians, grappled with the question of whether Twitter was doing them more harm than good. It was a continuation of an argument that’s been dragging on since January, the latest flare-up of a conflict nearly as old as the site.

He exhorted his colleagues: “It’s time we journalists all considered disengaging from the daily rhythms of Twitter, the world’s most damaging social network.”

A few months later, Yascha Mounk, writing in The Atlantic, called for journalists and politicians to not simply use Twitter less, but stop paying it any mind. While maintaining a Twitter account, she writes, “has become part of the job description for some of the most influential people in the country,” the truth is that it’s “not representative in the slightest” of the real, ordinary people who read newspapers, decide elections, and generally live their lives away from the petty vicissitudes of the timeline.

International politics has been acutely affected by Twitter, of course. Donald Trump’s compulsive tweeting leading up to and during his presidency has been the subject of strenuous global debate. But evidence suggests the average American cares rather little about Trump’s fleeting fixations. As Mounk points out, much tweeted-about affairs such as the Mueller report have “barely left a trace in public opinion,” not modifying his approval rating in the slightest and scarcely mattering to anyone outside of the “bubble” of politico-Twitter.

Such trivial controversies, the fugitive cause célèbre, occasionally feel manufactured, as if the attention-seeking politician is happy to tweet something inflammatory if it means winning eyes and ears. It can be a form of shock advertising (and, naturally, it worked for Donald Trump), even if it contributes to the widespread cheapening of Twitter discourse. This kind of thing, Mounk writes in her piece, is a tremendous waste of everybody’s time; an endless routine of vexing but ultimately irrelevant outrage.

Younger writers, who made their careers online and know only journalism in the age of social media, have meanwhile been airing their own growing concerns.

In Mother Jones, journalists and authors (and frequent Twitter users) Jenny Odell, Jia Tolentino, Mike Isaac, and Ashley Feinberg discussed Twitter the way several struggling addicts might discuss their relationship with drugs: “Like, you guys know the feeling when you end up looking at Twitter too much too early in the day, and then for the rest of the day you’re just totally fucked?” Tolentino asks. “Your brain is like a grasshopper, and it can’t sit still at all?”

Logging on in the morning, Isaac echoes, “is like walking into Mad Max,” as straight away he’s compelled to “spend at least an hour divining who is fighting who about what, and what some subtweets even mean.” They agree it’s a problem. They feel helpless before it.

I quit Twitter two years ago this week, in a rash bid to salvage my disintegrating attention span. I jettisoned a verified account, one I’d maintained carefully since 2008, and abandoned something like 7,000 followers; I didn’t announce my departure, write an essay about why I was quitting, or think very hard about what I might lose. One afternoon in late August, looking at Twitter put me in a foul mood—suddenly I realized it was too often putting me in a foul mood, distracting me from my work, and making me waste a lot of time on inane arguments and ludicrous opinions.

In the beginning, Twitter was a place for me to share my writing and fraternize with like-minded individuals. By the end, it was a riot of hate-reads and bad-faith quarrels, a daily bout of mean-spirited sniping while desperately trying not to say the wrong thing. I’d somehow traded amusement and delight for annoyance and anguish. It was throwing me off-balance. When I hit the deactivate button, I felt my equilibrium restored.

Twitter, like any social network, eats up time. But the ideas it disseminates and the debate it fosters takes up mental real estate, which is even more precious. The last two years, off Twitter, I’ve been happier, healthier, more productive. It’s not because I’m no longer wasting hours opening and closing the app, seeking distraction on the timeline. It’s because I’m no longer thinking about stuff I saw on Twitter.

The reluctance to quit—particularly in journalism and politics—is driven in part by the pernicious fear of missing out on something, whether the news of the day or an opportunity to exert some influence. When I shut down my account, colleagues warned I might fall out of touch with the cultural conversation, or worse, shut myself off from job prospects and stall my career advancement. Even if I’d come to resent Twitter, they told me, I still needed it.

Sarah Manavis, in the New Statesman, wrote last week about her own obsessive relationship with Twitter, and the 10-plus hours she spends on the platform every week. (It’s easy for the habit to get to that stage: seductively infinite, a deluge of new content always spewing forth.) Besieged by Twitter-provoked anxiety attacks and timeline agony, she asked her followers to describe their feelings about the site. “Users told me that it made them feel bad about themselves,” she reports with grim recognition. “It gave them anxiety and depression; and that, even if they’d originally enjoyed it, the app had become too much to bear.”

Interestingly, though, Manavis found a common theme among the platform’s weary and miserable: “No one—bar one single person—felt they could fully quit Twitter for good.”

People unable to quit frequently give the same reasons. Twitter furnishes reporters’ news stories; it locates journalists’ contacts and sources; it provides politicians a direct line to the common voter (or so they believe despite suggestions to the contrary). Writers worry that without a Twitter account, they’ll have a harder time cultivating and selling a personal brand. There is a widespread sense that quitting Twitter is like choosing exile; cut off from one’s peers, the ex-Twitter user is left to wander the offline world, isolated and ostracized.

“Maybe the depression, anxiety, and growing compulsion to self-harm by reading screaming tweets are the price we pay for more opportunities, better jobs, and more meaningful connections,” Manavis reflects.

Well, that’s some arrangement.

It’s difficult to know if my life or work would be any different if I’d remained on Twitter. It seems to me that I’ve been fine without it. I suppose it’s possible that a tweet could have led to some propitious success. It’s equally possible that a reckless or imprudent tweet could have driven me to ignominy. After all, you don’t get to choose which you get.

“I never do television,” Graham Greene told Gore Vidal haughtily, after a speech in the late 1980s. He felt the writer who did was demeaning himself, putting himself out there in an obscene way. No doubt he would have felt the same way about the writer who elected to tweet. There are more sensible ways to express an opinion, even in the absence of street-corner monologues. You need the room to concentrate and the freedom to think. And to do that well you need to log off—deactivate.

Real news always makes its way through, and I haven’t had difficulty keeping up with what’s relevant, serious or important. It’s only the raucous noise that I’m no longer hearing. When it comes to Twitter, you need to be offline.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect iAffairs’ editorial stance.

]]>6046Book Release – Exiting the Fragility Trap Rethinking Our Approach to the World’s Most Fragile Stateshttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/book-release-exiting-the-fragility-trap-rethinking-our-approach-to-the-worlds-most-fragile-states/
Wed, 21 Aug 2019 11:00:29 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=6028State fragility is a much-debated yet underinvestigated concept in the development and international security worlds. Based on years of research as part of the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy project at Carleton University, Exiting the Fragility Trap marks a major step toward remedying the lack of research into the so-called fragility trap. In examining the nature and dynamics of state transitions in fragile contexts, with a special emphasis on states that are trapped in fragility, David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy ask three questions: Why do some states remain stuck in a fragility trap? What lessons can we learn from those states that have successfully transitioned from fragility to stability and resilience? And how can third-party interventions support fragile state transitions toward resilience

Carment and Samy consider fragility’s evolution in three state types: countries that are trapped, countries that move in and out of fragility, and countries that have exited fragility. Large-sample empirical analysis and six comparative case studies—Pakistan and Yemen (trapped countries), Mali and Laos (in and out countries), and Bangladesh and Mozambique (exited countries)—drive their investigation, which breaks ground toward a new understanding of why some countries fail to see sustained progress over time.

David Carment is a political scientist and professor of international affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, and Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI). He is also the editor of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal. His research interests include the international dimensions of ethnic conflict including diaspora, early warning, peacekeeping, conflict prevention, and Canadian foreign policy analysis.

Yiagadeesen Samy is an economist and the director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. He has published widely on issues related to international and development economics, and his current research interests include state fragility, aid effectiveness, domestic resource mobilization, and income inequality, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa and small, developing island states.Find more information here

]]>6028Turkey and the S-400: Reconciling Strategic Diversification with Reliance on NATO?http://iaffairscanada.com/2019/turkey-and-the-s-400-reconciling-strategic-diversification-with-reliance-on-nato/
Wed, 14 Aug 2019 14:22:55 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=6032Turkey’s purchase—and now receipt—of the S-400 missile defence system raises myriad questions of interoperability and information security that together have led to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 programme. The system’s Russian origin also raises broader concerns over Turkey’s commitment to NATO, with some observers labelling the move a “strategic shift away from NATO.”

However, the S-400 may instead indicate a pragmatic foreign policy seeking to increase Turkey’s geostrategic flexibility. This policy, while accompanied by its own host of challenges for Turkey-NATO relations, is not a true reorientation. Instead, it aims to offset NATO’s perceived “unreliability” through interest-driven, issue-specific cooperation with actors, like Russia, outside the Euro-Atlantic Community. This enables Turkey to find support for short-term objectives where it diverges from NATO, while also theoretically increasing its strategic value to NATO by demonstrating it has other options—although it is by no means clear the latter has materialized.

This is a precarious balance; it greatly raises tensions within NATO, threatens a US-Turkey rupture, and provides Russia unprecedented leverage in Turkey-NATO relations. Turkey has decided this is an acceptable risk to find “best-alternatives” in correcting a “security deficit,” wherein NATO is unable or unwilling to address Turkey’s nonstate or indirect security concerns.

The S-400 is part of this best-alternative approach. The deal stems in significant part from the US’s 2015 withdrawal of the PATRIOT system over Turkish protests. Coming just a month before Turkey shot down a Russian jet, this action highlighted to Turkey an unwillingness of the Alliance to consider its security interests, short of an Article 5 crisis.

Yet concerns over the “security deficit” don’t end with just an unwillingness to consider Turkish preferences. Splits over the July 15 coup aftermath, the PYD/YPG, and Turkish illiberalism, contribute to a Turkish belief that NATO is undermining its regional interests. In Erdoğan’s troubling words: “the biggest threats we face are from [the Western alliance].” The message apparently received in Ankara is that it requires NATO consent to guarantee its own security. Such messaging stands in stark contrast to Turkey’s self-perception of its natural role as a major, independent regional power.

Rapprochement with Russia on an interest-based, issue-specific basis, like the S-400, allows Turkey to secure support where its interests diverge from NATO Allies. Russia’s vocal calls for a return to a multipolar global order are entirely compatible with a Turkish vision of its regional leadership. Turkey does not explicitly maintain international multipolarity as an objective, but diverging interests render it sensitive to NATO, especially American, actions that it sees as “dictates.”

Still, rapprochement is limited. Turkey is not seeking to turn away from NATO; it hopes to reconcile NATO membership with interest-based, issue-specific outreach to those outside the Alliance. In fact, rapprochement with Russia depends on its NATO membership. Best-alternative engagement with Russia only fills short-term gaps for Turkey, where—as in Syria—the “security deficit” is most pronounced. It does not resolve the longstanding security dilemma of the Russia-Turkey relationship.

Russian-Turkish enmity has a centuries-long history—amity has a far shorter, more irregular one. The power imbalance between the two remains in Russia’s favour, and so Turkey depends on NATO to tilt the scales. Erdoğan in Spring 2016 lamented the Black Sea as a “Russian lake” without NATO presence, and while Turkey-Russia relations have since dramatically improved, they are by no means firmly aligned. Turkey continues to deepen defence cooperation with Russia’s pro-Western adversaries in the Black Sea region, like Ukraine and Georgia. Disagreements on long-term security, such as over Idlib in Syria, demonstrate the importance of NATO relationship in preventing the balance from becoming too unfavourable. Sans NATO support, Ankara would be much more poorly placed to guarantee its interests in negotiating with Moscow, making a “strategic shift away from NATO” impractical.

NATO-Turkey relations in danger. Turkey feels paradoxically both threatened by and dependent on the Alliance, particularly given deteriorating Turkey-US relations. The S-400 will make things worse, sanctions—if applied—will compound, and distrust and confusion in US-Turkey relations are extremely high. Turkey will continue to seek best-alternatives to fill the NATO “security deficit,” and further imperil the relationship.

Despite these dangers, Turkey-NATO relations have a still-real lifeline: Turkey’s ideal outcome is to reconcile its efforts to find best-alternatives for the “security deficit” with NATO membership. It actually needs NATO to effectively pursue interest-based, issue-specific outreach, to Russia or another. If nothing else, this is a value-added that is not easily replaced. Capitalizing on this is essential to sustaining the relationship through perhaps its most tumultuous period.

Scott Bryce Aubrey is a master’s candidate at NPSIA and a coordinator at its Centre in Modern Turkish Studies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect iAffairs’ editorial stance.

]]>6032Parties competing over values, not substance, in foreign policy platformshttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/parties-competing-over-values-not-substance-in-foreign-policy-platforms/
Thu, 08 Aug 2019 22:24:47 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=6024In the 2015 federal election, Justin Trudeau campaigned on a foreign policy vision that differed radically from that of Stephen Harper, arguing that a decade of Conservative rule meant that Canada had drifted away from upholding the values that underpinned its actions as a global actor. However, in power, the differences between the two are slim. As the Annual Trudeau Foreign Policy Report Card has shown, the Liberal government’s foreign policy accomplishments are far less than what its hyperbolic rhetoric suggests. Given that foreign policy increasingly plays an important role in Canadian federal elections, what can we expect in the 2019 campaign?

As we near the election date, we can expect far more scrutiny of Liberal pledges. Despite Trudeau’s post-election proclamation that “Canada was back” on the world stage, this claim must be taken with a grain of salt. There are a number of key areas where the rhetoric has outstripped reality. Notably on climate change, to be repeatedly highlighted by the surging Green Party, not to mention the NDP, with its recently released Canadian Green New Deal. They will note how the Trudeau government has only timidly implemented snippets of the progressive liberal internationalism Trudeau successfully campaigned on in 2015. The problem is not the vision, but the execution.

The Conservatives, however, will argue that a change in leadership is required for Canada to be an effective global actor. They will replicate the Harper government’s 2015 depiction of Trudeau as an inexperienced neophyte in over his head, not able to deal with the serious issues of the day. They will raise Trudeau’s disastrous 2018 trip to India to show that he is a leader concerned with his personal brand of celebrity and domestic politics.

All parties will highlight the ongoing crisis with China and a still unratified NAFTA 2.0 as examples of Trudeau’s failure to protect and promote Canada’s interests and reputation as a trusted ally. They will raise his mishandling of the Wilson-Raybould affair, which garnered widespread international attention, to show how it tarnished both Trudeau’s personal political brand and the reputation of Canada as a country that upholds the rule of law—something it claims underlies the decision not to stop extradition hearings against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Tellingly, however, Andrew Scheer’s pre-election outline of Conservative foreign policy focused on Trudeau and the rhetoric of Liberal foreign policy, not on the substance of Liberal foreign policy. Conservatives emphasize that they could have managed these complex files better, appealing to their base in criticizing Trudeau more than his foreign policy. The Conservatives, however, have not demonstrated how their leadership would have produced significantly different results on NAFTA 2.0 or on China.

Indeed, Scheer’s foreign policy vision only differs substantively from Trudeau’s on a few files: Canadian participation in “Star Wars,” buying the F-35 fighter jet, and moving Canada’s embassy to Jerusalem. These wedge issues, which are not at the top of the list of Canadian foreign policy priorities, serve to mobilize important Canadian constituencies for the upcoming election and indicate that Scheer, like Trudeau, appears to be more interested in using foreign policy as a tool of domestic political competition than offering meaningful foreign policy alternatives.

Thus we are in for a replay of 2015, where the Conservatives, ahead of the Liberals in the polls, tried to frame Trudeau as a weak leader out of his depth. Meanwhile, the Liberals will continue to promote the rhetoric of liberal internationalism and will remind Canadians at every opportunity that Scheer is no different than Stephen Harper, whose values they said were out of sync with a majority of Canadians’, and that Trudeau’s international popularity has contributed to a good economy. The Liberals, as they often do, will claim that they embody Canadian values and can be trusted in power. Thus, the election will be a debate about values, not what we are actually doing (or not doing) in world affairs.

As we have argued in our book on foreign policy branding, we can expect discussions of foreign policy to play a large role in the election campaign, as it provides comfort, reaches out to political bases, and it allows parties to distinguish themselves from one another. But whose foreign policy will it be? Justin Trudeau’s yet-to-be-realized idea of bringing Canada back? Andrew Scheer’s retreat into an even tighter and more overt relationship with the United States? Or might we see a surprise, where Canadian voters follow a growing international trend of supporting the Green Party to actively tackle climate change? Only time will tell.

David Carment is CGAI fellow, and principal investigator of the annual Trudeau Foreign Policy Report Card. Richard Nimijean is a member of the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. They are co-editors of the recently published book, Canada, Nation Branding and Domestic Politics.

]]>6024Canada’s 2017 Defence Policy: A Triple Boost for Canadian Defence Intelligencehttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/canadas-2017-defence-policy-a-triple-boost-for-canadian-defence-intelligence/
Tue, 30 Jul 2019 22:25:16 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=6018Intelligence matters, no matter the era. A state which in peace or times of crisis tends to save taxpayers’ money at the expense of its security and intelligence apparatus pays with unnecessary blood during both peacetime and wartime. Similarly, a sovereign government that fails to prevent small-scale and strategic threats to its national security as far away from its borders as possible, including as a result of the inefficiency and failure of its foreign intelligence service(s), is not only incapable of shaping events in line with its vital national interests, such as providing for its population’s safety and general welfare, but is moreover inviting, however unintentionally, conflict domestically.

These fundamental truths have long served as axiomatic premises for strategy making and implementation in the national security domain. Today, they remain as valid as ever, if not even more so. As such, they have always been thoroughly understood within the broader, Anglo-American, “Three-to-Five Eyes” defence and intelligence community, with Canadian defence strategists and decision-makers being no exception. What’s more, Canada’s 2017 Defence Policy Review (DPR)3 takes a step further in acknowledging and emphasizing the strategic relevance of the state’s intelligence functions, Chapter 6 literally proclaims: “Intelligence is Canada’s first line of defence.”4

But, why now, and why in such a forthright fashion?5 Is it because Canada’s defence, in all of its aspects—homeland security and disaster relief, overseas operations, and global engagement—has been so “…heavily dependent upon the systematic collection, coordination, fusion, production, and dissemination of defence intelligence?”6 Or, it is because “intelligence has become fundamental” to any military success? Certainly both, but still, there is more to the story, since the ‘whys’ are always resting deeper than just existing at the surface.

Strategic Culture and Strategic Environment

On an implicit or purely declaratory level, most, if not all, countries deem intelligence as their ‘first line of defence.’ This is understandable given the popular metaphorical portrayal of the spying craft as a government’s ‘eyes and ears,’ and occasionally even its ‘sword’ (i.e., sabotage, targeted assassinations including drone attacks), in distant foreign lands. However, what distinguishes Canada’s new, trident phased approach to defence (“Anticipate. Adapt. Act.”),7 is the formal and very much lucid prioritization of ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance) capabilities over other crucial defence needs. For Ottawa, placing high priority upon “joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance” (JISR), as well as upon “enhancing defence intelligence” and “academic outreach,”8 is not simply a matter of continuity— a mere conceptual reflection of a time-honoured strategic culture of forward defence, that is of the prudent notion and understanding that the risks of conflict and war within the North-Atlantic core of the Western hemisphere should be minimized at all costs, including through forward deployment of any proper mix of military and intelligence assets.9 It is, rather, necessitated by the growing complexity and “sweeping changes in the character” of the global strategic and operational environment.10

In assessing these changes, Canada’s 2017 DPR, while basically conforming to allied equivalents generated over the past two decades,11 nonetheless renders a refreshed strategic picture, which is, moreover, nuanced from a Canadian perspective (i.e., Arctic issues).12 According to this up-to-date scan of the global strategic landscape, there are three ‘mega-trends’ of particular concern to Canada and its closest allies: the shifting balance of power and influence, not just in regions of particular importance to Canada and its allies, but globally;13 the changing nature of conflict (“grey zone[s],” hybrid warfare),14 and the rapid advance of technology, especially in the space and cyber domains.15 Taken together, these global tendencies are currently putting enormous pressure upon the Canadian and allied security and intelligence services.

In response, the Government of Canada and the Department of National Defence (DND) have recently undertaken to improve Canada’s intelligence capabilities. In the DPR, this commitment is captured by a single word: “Anticipate.”16 While there is nothing novel about using this term in a defence and security context,17 its inherent connotation and semantic profoundness are seldom exploited with both practical (capabilities) and psychological (PR/cognitive retention) objectives in mind. Seen through such lenses, the DND’s decision to use the term to designate the first phase of its new “AAA” approach to defence looks like a well-measured strategic move, despite giving away a couple of important aspects of its strategy:

Ottawa’s enhanced awareness and preventive attitude towards the surge in national security challenges (“better safe than sorry,” “better prevent than cure”); and, as a result, the imperative for the Canadian (defence) intelligence to “match the frantic pace of change.”18

Terminology aside, the DPR is quite elaborate in defining Phase I and the concept of strategic anticipation for Canada. To “Anticipate” means to remain mindful of the strategic utility of “Accurate, [and] timely information,” “to better understand potential threats to Canada [uppercase by author],”19 and based upon “better situational awareness” and “earlier warning” capabilities not just to make Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel “more secure” and effective when deployed, but “…to enhance our [overall] ability to identify, prevent or prepare for, and respond to a wide range of contingencies.”20 While success in this anticipatory phase is inevitably contingent upon collaboration with federal departments and entities beyond the defence portfolio,21 nothing can be done without an adequate set of military tools and strategic initiatives.

Bolstering Defence Intelligence via Three ‘Meta-Measures’

To provide for this, the DPR outlines three general, overarching measures (already mentioned earlier), each representing a cluster of steps, procurement projects, and/or new defence initiatives. For analytic convenience, the first measure, concerning priority investments in JISR, can be divided into three pillars:

integrating all existing and yet-to-be acquired JISR assets “into a networked, joint system-of-systems” for better operational command and control; and

focusing, in particular, upon Arctic JISR as a research and development priority so as to come up with “innovative solutions” for sovereignty challenges in the North.22

As for the first, key pillar, the DPR provides some insight into ongoing and upcoming acquisition or modernization projects. These specifically include the 2018 RADARSAT Constellation Mission,23the projected replacement of the modernized CP-140 Auroras by “the early 2030s” with a new Canadian Multi-Purpose Aircraft, a brand new ISR platform for the Special Operations Forces, and “the incremental modernization in the mid-2020s” of the Victoria-Class submarines.24

The remaining two ‘meta-measures’ are needed to bolster Canada’s defence intelligence and related academic outreach. Within the first, DND/CAF intelligence personnel are first and foremost encouraged to continue with the reciprocal intelligence-sharing practice, especially within NATO and the Five Eyes Community, while also respecting the principles of the rule of law and civilian control.25 Then, given the ambitious agenda surrounding the future of the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM), which, inter alia, envisages an enhanced PSYOPS role for the Command,26 the Defence team fleshes out three “new initiatives:” boosting CFINTCOM’s operational support capacity (i.e., enhanced forecasting, smooth integration with next-generation platforms, excellence in emerging domains such as cyber and space), recruiting up to 300 new defence intelligence officers (120 military personnel, including reservists, and 180 civilians), and establishing a CAF targeting capability.27

Finally, mindful of the fact that the best intelligence information often resides in open sources and informed academic discussions, the Government of Canada and DND have lately been keen on allocating a more generous amount for the country’s well-nurtured academic and analytic community. Consequently, the DPR projects “$4.5 million per year” for expanding traditional DND programs (i.e., expert briefs, the Defence Engagement Grant) and creating more diverse collaborative expert networks across the country.28

For practical reasons, in this particular text the acronym DPR refers to the end-product (Canada’s Defence Policy), rather than the related (review) process.

Strong, Secure, Engaged, p. 65.

The most direct answer, as formulated by the Defence team, reads: “The defence of Canada, the ability to operate effectively overseas, and the capacity to engage internationally are heavily dependent on the systematic collection, coordination, fusion, production, and dissemination of defence intelligence.” Ibid. However, the aim of this somewhat analytical piece is, while explaining the relevance of (defence) intelligence to Canada along DPR lines, to shed as much light as it could on some more fundamental factors.

Ibid. Here, the Defence team is laconically effective: “No ship goes to sea, no aircraft takes flight, and no boots hit the ground anywhere in the world without the input of specialists from the defence intelligence community.”

Ibid, pp. 63-87.

Ibid, pp. 63-67.

Speaking of continuity, observers ought not to be misguided by phraseology, such as the DPR’s promotion of “a fundamentally new…approach to defence.” Ibid, p. 63). While Canada’s defence strategy has, indeed, been well rethought in many respects and as a whole, the role of intelligence has always been taken seriously in Ottawa, London, and Washington.

This trend has to do with recent geopolitical and geostrategic developments. Underlying it is the partial return of the nation-state on the global scene, mainly through political realism, sovereignty, and social conservatism. Its defining features, on the other hand, are revived state competition, unrelenting influence by non-state actors, and, as a result, growing complexity.

In addition to the debatable end of “the era of terrorism,’ the world is witnessing a new, more intense variant of special or hybrid warfare where state-sponsored non-state actors are all the more factorized.

Ibid.

It should be immediately pinpointed here that, while Phase I (“Anticipate”) of the DND’s new, “AAA” approach to defence “best supports the assertion that intelligence isCanada’s first line of defence,” it is by no means all-encompassing. For instance, according to the DPR, Phase II of the same approach, entitled “Adapt,” envisages improvements in the “Use of Space and Cyber Capabilities,” which would no doubt affect Canada’s defence intelligence capabilities at least indirectly. Strong, Secure, Engaged, pp. 67, 70-73. Also, among the projected capability improvements in the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, as well as in terms of joint force, many are ISTAR–relevant. Ibid, pp. 38-42.

General Charles Bouchard, for instance, recently recalled how he had first heard this resonating word being used in a strategic manner in a NORAD context, namely as early as 2007-2008. Charles Bouchard, speech, 60th Anniversary Celebration, “NORAD at 60,” Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada, Winnipeg, 24 May 2018.

The fact that here the DPR substitutes two key verbs in the world of intelligence, “to analyze” and “to assess,” with “to understand” is sufficiently telling. It carries an essential message that intelligence is about understanding threats in all relevant aspects and beyond, in the widest possible context.

Strong, Secure, Engaged, p. 63.

Ibid.

Ibid, pp. 38-40, 65.

Ibid., 65; and Canadian Space Agency, “RADARSAT Constellation,” last updated March 30, 2017, http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat/Default.asp This yet-to-be-launched expanded constellation of all-weather, day-and-night RADARSAT satellites represents a cardinal JISR asset as it contributes to achieving two major and complementary JISR objectives: to “enhance surveillance and domain awareness” along with satellite communications.

Department of National Defence, Strong, Secure, Engaged, 65.

Ibid., 66.

PSYOPS stands for psychological operations. The DPR is very explicit in this regard (Ibid., 66): “The Defence team will increase its intelligence capacity, and will examine its capabilities to understand and operate in the information environment, in support of the conduct of information and influence operations.”

Department of National Defence, Strong, Secure, Engaged, 66.

Ibid., 67.

Hristijan Ivanovski is a Research Fellow at the University of Manitoba (UofM) Centre for Defence and Security Studies (CDSS), Associate Editor (Europe) of iAffairs Canada, and a former coordination officer with Macedonia’s Secretariat for European Affairs. Since 2016, he has been a Member of East-West Bridge (EWB) contributing to the Foundation’s Foreign Policy Task Force. Hristijan can be reached @ hristijan.ivanovski@umanitoba.ca.

On June 4th, at the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a C$1.4billion annual commitment to support women and girls’ health around the world starting in 2023, with half the amount dedicated to sexual and reproductive rights (SRHR).

This analysis attempts to make sense of this commitment by raising two questions:

How does this historic C$1.4billion annual commitment compare to similar past commitments?

How does it comport with trends in global health spending, and overall trends in international assistance spending?

How does the C$1.4billion annual spending commitment compare to similar past commitments?

The C$1.4billion annual spending announcement made at the Women Deliver conference has been rightly lauded by civil society organizations as “historic”.

Given it is a 10-year commitment, this is a significant achievement in terms of increasing the predictability of international assistance spending on women and girls’ health.

It also clearly prioritizes a high return on investment area in development spending, as it is widely acknowledged that spending on women and girls’ health (especially sexual rights) can have a very high development payoff in terms equity, empowerment and wider macroeconomic effects such as accelerating the demographic dividend.

This commitment builds on a longstanding Canadian development priority:

Muskoka/MNCH 1.0; 2010-2015; C$2.85billion; Conservative – PM Harper

The first significant spending commitment on women and girls’ health was made under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper at the 2010 G7/8 summit Canada hosted in Muskoka. This commitment to maternal newborn child health (MNCH), which came to be known as the Muskoka Initiative, was a 5year C$2.85billion commitment, a level that was exceeded in the final tally (according to our analysis the actual total spending reached C$3.12billion over 5 years).

On an annual basis, core health sector spending ranged between $500mn to C$670mn during this period(spending on reproductive health and population policies during this period was additional, approx. C$200mn-250mn annually).

MNCH 2.0; 2015-2020; C$3.5billion – Started by Conservatives, retained and built on by the Liberals

In 2014, the then Conservative government under PM Harper announced an extension and expansion, whereby Canada committed to spend C$3.5billion on MNCH from 2015 to 2020. When the Liberals took over in 2015, they retained this commitment and expanded it further (by covering the full spectrum of reproductive and sexual health and rights, including abortion).

During this period (2015-2018) core health spending ranged between C$600mn to $750mn annually. Spending on reproductive and population health (the best available proxy for SRHR) expanded much faster, from approx. C$200mn annual at the start of the period to approx. C$345mn by 2017-18.

Relative to past similar commitments, the C$1.4billion annual spending announcement represents a significant increase; nearly double the level compared to MNCH 1.0 and 30% to 40% higher compared to MNCH 2.0 on an annual basis.

How does it comport with trends in Canada’s global health spending and overall international assistance spending?

The above analysis only provides a partial assessment for two reasons: first, we know that both health spending and gender-targeted spending is growing rapidly and expected to grow further; given both the explicit target of 95% gender focused spending of the Feminist International Assistance Policy and international obligations (e.g. commitments to multilaterals which account for a significant share of Canada’s global health spending at approx. 70%). Second, sector-specific spending is partly a function of overall international assistance spending, which again is growing and expected to grow further, even if only modestly.

A proper assessment of the level of ambition of the C$1.4billion annual commitment would need to consider recent and expected trends in both health sector and overall assistance levels.

Furthermore, the recent announcement is vague in specifying what is and isn’t being counted towards the C$1.4billion annual figure.

With the above caveats in mind and in order to fill the gap in understanding, below we define spending on women and girls’ health by aggregating spending coded to the OECD-DAC sectors: health and population policies/programmes & reproductive health. We also reflect the gender-targeting level. We leverage project-level open data, sourced from the Historical Project Data Set (HPDS) which is freely available via our Platform on multiple levels. The data in the graphics below are reflective of all Canadian departments and agencies providing assistance (data on our projects explorer tool is reflective of GAC only).

For fiscal 2017-18, total core health sector spending was approx. C$743mn while spending on SRHR was approx. C$342mn.

SRHR has been the main driver of increases in health spending in recent years; SRHR spending in 2017-18 was almost 50% higher compared to the previous year.

Over the past 10 years, since 2007, total health spending (inclusive of reproductive health) has grown at a CAGR of approx. 6.5%. The CAGR over the last 5 years (since the peak in 2012 after which there was a drop) is approx. 4%.

As mentioned, sector level trends are partly a function of overall trends in assistance. To this end we can reflect on the main source of Canadian aid spending, which is the International Assistance Envelope (IAE).

To do this we leverage recent Budget documents (fiscal measures tables) and GAC’s statistical reports to Parliament. Budget 2018 and 2019 are important as they lay out the fiscal profile of additions to the envelope since the adoption of the new Feminist assistance policy. This is reflected in the first table below.

The second table reflects IAE levels, both, as reported to Parliament (programs funded by the IAE, across department) and as represented in the IAE structure detailed in recent Budgets. An important caveat to keep in mind here is that while the reports to Parliament are on an ex-post expenditure basis, the IAE structure detailed in Budgets 2018 and 2019 are on an ex-ante budgetary allocation basis. Admittedly this is not an apples to apples comparison (as a lot of factors affect budgeting vs. actual expenditure, e.g. level of unused IAE room, if and how it is carried forward from year to year, level of sun-setting projects, launch of new initiatives etc). However it is the best we can do with available data. Starting in 2020 GAC will issue a new consolidated report on the IAE which is expected to present actual expenditures against budgets more clearly as relates to the IAE account.

Based on the available data, our estimations have significant implications for the what this new commitment means for Canadian development spending:

If we assume the IAE level at approx. C$4.9bn in 2015 (accounting for certain exceptional double payments etc. that affected figures at the time), and assume that it reaches the C$5.7bn level projected for 2019 in the most recent Budget, this implies a CAGR of approx. 3.85%

Our estimate for the IAE level in 2023-24 based on figs in the tables below and a set of assumptions (beyond the purview of the discussion here) is approx. C$6.1billion. Relative to current actual IAE expenditure levels (2017-18) this would represent a CAGR of approx. 3.1%

These figures are important because the announced commitment only begins in 2023. If we assume that health spending maintains its share in overall assistance spending and we assume the overall envelope trends as estimated, we estimate that from 2017-18 out to 2023-24 Canada’s health spending will grow in the range of CAGR 3.2% to 4%

If we apply this to the present known level of health spending (C$1.1billion in 2017-18) the corresponding level (all else equal) by 2023 we expect would be around C$1.31billion to C$1.37billion

In other words, Canada’s health spending by 2023, when the commitment is supposed to begin for 10years, will already be very close to the C$1.4billion commitment announced.

This somewhat changes the picture. While on the face of it the commitment looks like a substantial increase (doubling) relative to past similar commitments. A deeper look, given what we know about the trend in health spending and expected future spending given announced increments between the present and 2023, shows that this announcement is more a reconfirmation of health spending than a substantial increase.

Conclusion

The aim of this analysis has been to put into perspective Canada’s commitment to spend $1.4billion annually, for 10 years, on women and girls’ health starting in 2023, which was announced at the Women Deliver conference in June 2019. We do so in two ways: first, by comparing this announcement to past similar commitments. Second, by providing a forward looking analysis based on recent trends in health and gender related spending, and expected trends in the IAE given what we know about planned increments out to 2023, when this commitment is supposed to begin.

Our main findings are as follows:

On face value, relative to past similar commitments, the C$1.4billion annual spending announcement represents a significant increase; nearly double the level compared to MNCH 1.0 and 30% to 40% higher compared to MNCH 2.0 on an annual basis.

Given it is a 10 year commitment, this is a significant achievement in terms of increasing the predictability of international assistance. It also prioritizes a high return high impact area in development spending.

However we know that health (and gender related) spending are growing and expected to grow further, given the adoption of the FIAP.

We also know that the overall envelope (IAE) is expected to grow, even if only modestly.

We estimate that out to 2023-24, the IAE will grow at approx 3.1% CAGR.

Furthermore, we demonstrate that the IAE has already been growing (since 2015, at approx 3.85% CAGR); and that health spending has been growing (at 6.5% CAGR over 10 years since 2007 and 4% since its peak in 2012).

In order to stay in line with recent trends and roughly maintain its share in a modestly growing envelope, we estimate that health spending will quite naturally grow at between 3.2% to 4% CAGR out to 2023 when this commitment is expected to begin. This of course is based on a number of assumptions (all of which, in our view, are fairly conservative; i.e. if anything growth could be even faster as has been the case in certain areas of health spending, notably SRHR under the Liberal government).

We demonstrate that the current level of core health and SRHR spending (using reproductive health as our proxy) is already around $1.1 billion annual.

If we apply our estimate growth range (between 3.2% to 4% CAGR) to this, all else being equal, we estimate health spending to be in the range of $1.31 billion to $1.37 billion annually.

Since this level is very close to the $1.4 billion annual level announced, we conclude that this commitment is more a reconfirmation than a substantial increase.

It may also be qualitatively different from past similar commitments for two reasons. Nothing prevents a new government (or the same government) from changing this, both since it begins further out in time (2023), and because it is unclear if any additional resources required to meet the commitment level have been added to the IAE profile or if they remain to be negotiated in the future. This is different from the past two health sector commitments which were made largely out of existing IAE resources at the time.

Lance Hadley is a PhD candidate with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University and a data analyst at the Canadian International Development Platform.

Aniket Bhushan is the principal investigator at the Canadian International Development Platform

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect iAffairs’ editorial stance.

]]>6001A Failure of Compellence: Why the US-Iran Situation Has Escalatedhttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/a-failure-of-compellence-why-the-us-iran-situation-has-escalated/
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 11:00:44 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=5996During the past few weeks, the news has been dominated with stories about the sharp escalation in tensions between the US and Iran. This dates back to Iran’s announcement on May 8 that it would stop complying with parts of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and resume enriching uranium, which could be used in developing nuclear weapons, unless the European signatories to the agreement provide financial assistance. This was followed by oil tankers passing near the Straits of Hormuz on May 13 and June 13 being damaged by sabotage, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton claiming that the tankers were attacked by Iran. Most recently, a US drone was shot down in international airspace by Iran on June 20th, leading President Trump to order military airstrikes before deciding to back down in favor of cyberattacks on Iranian computers instead. All of this has led many to wonder if the US may end up going to war with Iran (which is not helped by the fact that Bolton and Pompeo, the key foreign policy figures in the administration, are ardent anti-Iran hawks).

These tensions didn’t come out of nowhere, of course. Relations between the two states have been poor since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis, which haven’t been helped by the Iranian government calling for the destruction of Israel and supporting terrorism in the Middle East and beyond. The US, meanwhile, withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 due to Trump having promised to do so during the 2016 presidential campaign after attacking it as “the worst deal ever” (while ignoring that all evidence suggests that Iran was complying with the agreement while being subject to the strictest nuclear safeguards and inspections in the world by the IAEA). This was only surprising in that it took so long to actually happen, since most Republican officials (and a fair number of Democrats) decried the deal as a failure for not restricting Iran’s non-nuclear proliferation activities as well – ignoring that there was no way President Hassan Rouhani or Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini would have ever agreed to that. At the same time, the administration also resumed the enforcement of sanctions against Iran and any foreign entities that did business with it – again, despite the fact that Iran was found to be in compliance with the agreement. In short, it’s completely unsurprising that the Iranian government has decided to resume uranium enrichment when agreeing to halt its proliferation efforts didn’t alleviate sanctions, making the whole situation a compellence failure by the US.

As a concept, compellence is fairly similar to deterrence: both rely on the idea of influencing someone else’s actions with the threat of punishment. Deterrence does so by having the person/group/government making the threat (the “sender”) warn the target that carrying out a certain action will lead to it being punished so badly that it would be better off not doing it at all. A rudimentary example of this would be with law enforcement: if you commit a crime, you’ll be sent to prison, and since you generally want to avoid going to prison (assuming you’re “rational,” which is a whole other issue), you’ll avoid committing crimes. The concept tends to be associated more with nuclear weapons, however, with the logic being “Don’t attack me, or I’ll nuke you” (generally something that governments want to avoid). Compellence differs in that it has the sender inflict the punishment until the target does what it’s told, and is all about forcing someone to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. The logic somewhat resembles that of a mugging – “I’m not going to stop beating you until you give me your wallet,” so to speak. Geopolitically, this tends to occur with the use of sanctions (“I’ll keep crushing your economy until you stop trying to make nuclear weapons”) or even limited military strikes (“I’ll keep firing missiles at your bases and cities until you give me this chunk of land”).

While the Trump administration has proven itself to be very good at the punishment aspect of compellence, it’s done a terrible job for the whole “stop hurting the target once they do as they’re told part.” This makes their threats totally incredible (as “lacking credibility,” not “awesome”), which is something of a problem for coercion. After all, if you try deter someone with nuclear weapons and then don’t actually carry out your threat when you’re attacked (at least if the attack actually poses a serious threat), everyone’s going to think that it’s carte-blanche to attack you as well. Similarly, if you keep hurting a target after it does what you want, it’s not going to have an incentive to keep following your demands. Continuing to sanction Iran after it stopped enriching uranium is a perfect example of this kind of compellence failure. At that point, the Iranian government wouldn’t see any downsides to going back to nuclear weapons development, since it’s going to be sanctioned regardless – may as well have some nuclear weapons sitting around as a deterrent.

These actions make more sense if the US rationale is not just to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but to spark regime change or to justify a war for doing so. The issue with trying to sanction a country into poor enough economic conditions for there to be a revolution is that it doesn’t work: sanctions can never be costly enough for a government to willingly leave power, and repressive regimes will usually just focus their spending on boosting domestic security forces and entrenching their control of the economy. And even if they do cause enough misery for the government to be overthrown, the resulting collateral damage from sanctions mean that the new government would have no reason to be friendly towards the country that was hurting them in the first place.

Using the failure of sanctions as a pretense for going to war with Iran certainly makes sense, given Bolton’s role in the Trump administration: beyond his role in getting the US to invade Iraq in 2003, the man threatens war against other states so often that he would likely respond to a leaky kitchen sink by calling for airstrikes against local plumbers. But going to war with Iran would be a wholly different and much bloodier conflict, given that it has a better trained and much better equipped army than Saddam Hussein had at his disposal after over a decade of sanctions. There’s no guarantee that the US would be willing to suffer the potential losses from such a war, or even be able to succeed at regime change at all.

So far, war between the US and Iran doesn’t seem likely to break out soon. Given the tensions and increased mobilization, however, it would only take one side making a miscalculation about the other’s intentions for the situation to escalate to the point of disaster. All of this could be avoided if the Trump administration backs down from its maximalist positions – but again, top officials like Pompeo and Bolton appear devoted to forcing regime change in Iran, making this unlikely.

Mark Haichin is a PhD student with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He has a Masters in International Relations (Research) from the London School of Economics, UK. He specialises in issues relating to nuclear deterrence and proliferation. In addition, he has strong research interests in terrorism, ethnic conflict, and international relations.

Too often lost amidst the headlines of a conflict are the people, communities, and livelihoods caught between the major players. In Ukraine, violence between central government forces and Donbas region separatists has had profound and tragic consequences for civilian populations. Landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERWs) contributed to nearly half of civilian casualties in 2018. In the blur of intra-state conflict, non-state combatants, and hybrid warfare, it perhaps comes as no surprise that the illegality of these weapons has not proved a sufficient deterrent of their use. The Ukraine Commission on Landmine and other Explosives: Alert, Notify, Educate, Remove (UCLEANER) is in part driven by the view that a project with narrow but well-defined objectives can have a significant effect on the conflict as a whole. By leveraging the expertise of NGOs operating in the conflict area, UCLEANER hopes to not only reduce casualties, but to build trust with affected communities, allow displaced persons to return home, and rebuild local economies. In doing so, the project will work to bring the principles agreed upon in Minsk II closer to fruition.

In order to make the most efficient use of available resources, UCLEANER targets specific locations and economic sectors for its decontamination operations. Additional weight is attributed to more densely populated areas, as well as to the primary economic sectors in the Donbas: the industrial and agricultural sectors.

UCLEANER will begin its preliminary phase in May 2019, transition into the operational phase one year out, and come to a close in May 2023. The budget for the project amounts to CAD 20 million, the bulk of which will be distributed in the operational phase. During the preliminary phase, CAD 2 million will be allocated for the following: the establishment of a nexus between all relevant stakeholders, outreach to affected communities, and information gathering to determine the areas that are most in need of mine clearance. The operational phase will see the remaining CAD 20 million will be allocated to select Ukrainian localities for clearance and associated monitoring programs. The latter will be conducted by the Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS), and will gauge the impact of the project using data collected on internal displaced persons (IDPs) and changes to economic activity

]]>5941Why We Believed North Korea Executed Its Nuclear Negotiatorshttp://iaffairscanada.com/2019/why-we-believed-north-korea-executed-its-nuclear-negotiators/
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 16:12:28 +0000http://iaffairscanada.com/?p=5990Just when we thought we had moved past the failed US-North Korea nuclear summit in Hanoi back in February, it shuffled back into the news again. On May 31st, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported that the North Korean negotiators for the summit, including special envoy to the US Kim Hyok-chol, had been executed in March for their failure. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un’s right-hand man, Korean Worker’s Party vice-chairman Kim Yong-chol, was also reported as having been imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour and re-education. The article, which cited only a single anonymous source (which any journalism school will tell you is hardly due diligence for reporting), stated that these purges were meant to help stamp down internal unrest, since the failed summit undermined the infallibility of Kim Jong-un and the North Korean government. Given the apparent paucity of information, some experts expressed doubts about the veracity of the story, while the US government stated that it would look into the reports.

At least part of the execution story was apparently discredited on June 2, when the Korean Central News Agency (the North Korean state news agency) included Kim Yong-chol on a list of officials who accompanied Kim Jong-un to an art performance. While it seems like Kim avoided having to do hard labour, it does seem like he’s suffered a decline in importance, as his name was noted as only being 10th among the 12 officials listed. Additionally, he also didn’t accompany Kim Jong-un on a visit to Russia in April, and was noted as having been removed as head of the United Front Department (which is responsible for relations with South Korea and espionage) around the same time.

So why was this story so readily believed when there was so little reliable evidence to support it? There are a few reasons as to why this is was the case:

As a result, very little accurate information about what happens in North Korea actually gets out of the country, leading to considerable speculation about its inner workings. It says something that much of the information we also get about North Korea comes from defectors and from diplomatic contact with other countries, rather than from North Korea itself. Even historical information rarely comes directly from North Korean sources – something I learned for myself when digging around for archival documents and finding that most tend to be reports and cables from Romanian and Hungarian diplomats. Given all this, it’s somewhat unsurprising that a story with only a single source was able to get so much traction despite not being verified; having a paucity of reliable sources on North Korea is the usual situation, rather than being exceptional.

This wouldn’t have been the first time North Korean officials had been executed.

One of the main reasons the story seemed so plausible is that it would be far from the first time that Kim Jong-un had people executed. One of the most notable examples is how he had his uncle Jong Sang-Thaek, the vice-chairman of the National Defence Committee and second-most powerful government official, executed in December 2013. The lack of transparency makes the specific reasoning for the execution unclear, but given his prominent position it’s likely that he was perceived as a threat to Kim Jong-un’s power and needed to be removed. Other officials have been executed or imprisoned for a variety of reasons over the years, with diplomats being seen as especially prone to the latter due to the need for re-education to make sure they aren’t being unduly influenced by foreign ideologies. The executions have also reportedly been … somewhat over the top, including an Army vice-minister being killed with a mortar bombardment in 2012 for drinking during the mourning period for Kim Jong-il and security officials being executed with anti-aircraft guns in 2017 for apparently making false reports. (Stories that Jong Sang-Thaek was killed with a pack of wild dogs have been proven to be untrue, but the fact that they were considered plausible in the first place speaks volumes about how North Korea is perceived).

The most well-known instance of Kim Jong-un having someone killed was in February 2017. On top of his being a close relative of Kim Jong-un, he was targeted in a crowded public area with VX nerve agent, possibly one of the deadliest chemical weapons in the world. Given how brazen this was, especially since VX can kill with as little as 10 mg and is meant to affect large areas as a vapor, it becomes a lot easier to believe that Kim Jong-un would have diplomats shot or imprisoned for embarrassing him internationally.

People keep thinking of Kim Jong-un as “crazy” or “irrational.”

This topic almost inevitably comes up whenever North Korea is discussed. Admittedly, given the executions described above and the cult of personality that’s formed around North Korean leaders, it’s somewhat understandable that people think of Kim Jong-un as being crazy and unpredictable. However, it seems far more likely that Kim Jong-un, like his grandfather and father, is a rational actor attempting to ensure the continued survival of his government, since it almost certainly ties in with his own survival. While it’s easy to think of North Korea as an absolute dictatorship where everyone follows the whims of the ruling Kims without question, the reality is that the government is pretty reliant on the support of a number of elites, particularly high-ranking military officers (who solidified their positions by supporting Kim Jong-il’s succession in the 1990s in exchange for the military being elevated above the KWP and bureaucracy). If it looked like something was threatening their positions and benefits – say, the infallible Supreme Leader being embarrassed on the international stage – that support base becomes a lot shakier. Brutally punishing people for their failures is a useful way for Kim Jong-un to assert his supremacy in the North Korean political system – just one that seems repulsive to the rest of us who don’t worry about being killed in a coup or revolution.

Mark Haichin is a PhD student with the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He has a Masters in International Relations (Research) from the London School of Economics, UK. He specialises in issues relating to nuclear deterrence and proliferation. In addition, he has strong research interests in terrorism, ethnic conflict, and international relations.